


what would you do if your son was at home, crying all alone on the bedroom floor ‘cause he’s hungry

by BlackWidowRising



Series: Lyra ‘verse [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Child Neglect, Death of a Parent, Gen, Grappling with Mortality, Loss, Military Family, wanting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:14:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22197679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackWidowRising/pseuds/BlackWidowRising
Summary: Ana was the bad sister
Relationships: Dysfunctional Familial Relationships
Series: Lyra ‘verse [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1505927





	what would you do if your son was at home, crying all alone on the bedroom floor ‘cause he’s hungry

Ana is eleven when their parents are killed. She helps the military organise the funerals and corrals her siblings during the service. The military hands them off to a strange relative who promptly takes them back to their house. He never comes back. Ana never sees a bereavement check or a pension payment. She hates the military for that.

Ana is eleven and she is somehow expected to take care of her younger siblings. Liberty, Blaise, and Adira are old enough to take care of themselves, they can take care of Moses and Lyra. Ana throws herself into school, eats first whenever she is hungry, and ignores her siblings.

Some nights, when Lyra wails well into the morning, Ana just wants to dump her at an orphanage so their is quiet. Some days she finds Liberty and Blaise huddled together, whispering.

Suddenly there is more food on the table. Ana stops coming home to bare shelves. Ana starts coming home to Moses, Blaise, and Lyra. Then just Moses and Lyra. The cops come through for Adira every few weeks. Ana never bails her out.

Ana moves on from their parents death. She gets accepted to a fast track high school for doctors. She moves out of the house her parents bought and into the dorms. Her parents have been dead for four years.

Ana does not see her siblings. They do not seek her out. The last time she sees Adira is because the cops call her to holding. Adira is fourteen and they offer her a choice, prison or the military. Adira chooses the military. Ana spits in her face, it makes Adira laugh, a crackling inhuman sound from deep within her chest. “Since when do you care what kills me?”

“Since when do you care what kills me?”

“Since when do you care what kills me?” The phrase echoes in her head for weeks. 

Two months after Adira enlists Ana graduates.

“Since when do you care what kills us?”

“Since when do you care what kills us?”

Ana seeks out Moses, who is now a he. Moses is eleven and still caring for Lyra, he wants to enlist as a medic someday. Lyra is six, she barely remembers the sister who left, but what she does is not pretty. Lyra looks up to everyone but Ana because Ana is the one who abandoned them.

“Since when do you care what kills us?”

“Since when do you care what kills us?”

Ana leaves. She leaves the city under the mountain. She leaves her siblings. She leaves her family. The above world is huge, there she is a girl with a future and not a notorious past. She forges papers and applies to college and graduates in a year. Applies to med school and finishes in two. Ana moves to Seattle for residency, rents an apartment, starts a life.

“Since when do you care what kills you?”

“Since when do you care what kills you?”

Ana dies walking home in the second year of her residency, she is idled by the Watchdogs. Ana dies staring up at the stars. She dies thinking of her siblings. Ana dies on a chilly November night. She is twenty-two.

“Since when do you care what kills you?”

“Since when do you care what kills you?”

Ana left the city under the mountain. She left her siblings. She left her family. Ana left the military behind and yet, she is killed by the very bullets she ran away from to escape.

“Since when do you care what kills us?”

“Since when do you care what kills us?” Ana answers that question honestly, she never did, not the way they wanted her to.


End file.
